Sleep? That's Like Coffee For People With Too Much Free Time.

It's suddenly fall, overnight the weather went from warm, sunny, t-shirts and shorts to sweatshirts, jeans and warm blankets on the bed. That should mean good sleeping weather, but it's also well into the 4th quarter, and I am busy trying to prepare for what I want to believe will be a great Christmas season. That means that I sleep only when I can no longer stay awake, and wake up much to early ready to go back to work...

I find myself sitting at the computer once again, with a list of things to do longer than my arm (at least it feels that way!) While I am anxious to create, I have business to take care of before my mind is able to concentrate on that process.

The things I am trying to master include learning about SEO, which is Search Engine Optimization. Although I've always been fairly savvy when it comes to technology, this is an area I knew very little about when I opened an online store in Etsy. I never needed to know much about it before. The gist of it is, in order to get found by Google, for example, it's not enough to have great products, you have to have the right words, in the right places, in the right order. Sounds simple enough. It is not...There are probably hundreds of places on line to get help setting this up, and while there are many great tips and pages and pages of instructions, and you could spend forever redoing and refining and re reading. It seems that much of the process of SEO is clouded in mystery-and is sort of like shooting at a moving target, because the market is dynamic, and things change all the time. It shouldn't be so abstract, but it is.

Yesterday when I stopped obsessing over that process and got ready to work on new items for my store, my printer started behaving strangely again. Last week I spent 9 hours online with HP trying to get my printer to obey the simplest of commands after having spent 4 days trying to figure out the problem myself. It seemed to be fixed, until today, when it started rejecting my prints mid job for no apparent reason. Distractions. 

I decided that I would clean up my workroom and work on something concrete that had a clear beginning, middle and end, and did not require the computer to complete. 

Refinishing a yucky bookshelf to use in my workroom.

It's gross, it has stains and scratches and even some bugs and other unidentifiable things that were painted over, but I can fix it.        

  

 By tomorrow...

Duvet Covers Made from Painters Drop Cloths

Painters drop cloths are so useful!  This time I was making a couple of small duvet covers for baby sized blankets, 36" x 48". The theme was Charleston, SC.  Luckily a local tool store was selling some drop cloths that were 4'x12', with care I could get both of the duvet covers out of one drop cloth. I bought a couple of extras just in case, because the quality can be inconsistent.

Using a theme of old letters and postcards with Charleston postmarks or addresses, I painted up some ideas, and then scanned them into my computer. I made them into a group of collages to applique on one side of the duvet cover, and stencilled the location on the reverse.

"Vintage"  letters, postcards and postmarks.

I prepared the layouts and the collages on my laptop, and it looked pretty simple until the printer started jamming mid project, and then inconveniently ran out of ink.

And the dropcloth pieces: I know you are supposed to measure twice and cut once, and I do practice that - but even so a couple of pieces were unaccountably wrong and had to be recut. (THAT is why I bought extras!)

I printed the collages on pieces of dropcloth or muslin, and appliqued them on the front of the duvet cover.

The pattern was really simple, barring any mistakes, each one was half of the drop cloth, which I then folded in half, and sewed 3 sides together like a large pillow case.  I hemmed the open edges and put together the closure using a 6" strip of fabric from the extra cloth.

I made up postmarks and used my birthday as the date...
I looked at old letters and cards online to get ideas.

 

Grommets and Ties

This is the closure I figured out; a sort of modified envelope with grommets and ties. The ties were made out of the double stitched seams I trimmed off the spare drop cloth.

It looks simple, and I was sure it would be, but I could not get it right. First the grommet tool was the wrong size. Then one of the grommets got smashed, which left a jagged edge, which of course cut my finger, and I only narrowly escaped bleeding allover the almost completed duvet.
It took me 3 tries to get the closure right.

I mixed in a couple of advertising images
I found from an old Life magazine.

Finally, after sewing and resewing, they were done, and I could wrap them up, add a card to each, and ship them off to their new home!

Dancing with Poodles

Blue the poodle and I went up to the post office to pick up our mail, and ran into a neighbor that I had not met before. We introduced ourselves and chatted for a few minutes, and then her young daughter joined us. She looked at me, and looked at Blue, and asked "Can your poodle waltz?"

The truth is that he can, as long as I lead.

The Deer Ate My Grapes

hungry deer

the last bunch

I have seven grape vines. Six of them have been eaten down to stubs by the deer for the past 2 or 3 years. One is inside the fence, and so it grows lushly and produces delicious grapes (I'm not sure what kind). Most bunches are outside the fence, but protected. This year there was just one bunch inside the fence, and I tried to protect the outside ones-with old boards, just a couple of days ago as they were approaching perfection.

Today I went out to check, and all but one bunch is gone. GONE!! 

I used to think the deer were so lovely and beautiful and sweet, and was happy to have them around. Reluctantly I have come to resent them at times - mainly for eating my grapes and my apple tree (they took the whole tree down and ate all the apples). One year they ate my little potted Christmas tree.


These are the only plants they have not decimated...at least I still have a garden!

Black Eyed Susans

Lavender

Gloriosa Daisies

DIY Cabin Lampshade

I know that mid century modern is very popular right now,

but it was never a style that really resonated with me...I always

hated that look. When a friend of mine bought a little house in Lake Tahoe, one of the things he inherited was a "swag" lamp with this gold flecked, pale pink shade.  I don't have a picture of the lamp hanging, but it had a big "antiqued" metallic chain draped across the ceiling and down the wall, and it was hanging from  a Victorian looking, ornate hook in the ceiling. Never my favorite look.

My friend was trying to keep a "cabiny" feeling in his decor, and a pink and gold flecked lampshade was definitely not what he had in mind.

He was going to toss it.

The first time I saw the lamp, I looked at the whip stitch trim, and the translucence, and thought "I can make it look like rawhide." Now, I agree that cabiny rawhide looking lampshades are just as kitschy in their own way as pink fiberglass "parchment", but even so, it would be the right look for a Tahoe Cabin.

Here's how I transformed it:

I cleaned the entire shade and trim with some mineral spirits, to get the dirt off and to remove any finish or sealer it might have had so that it could absorb the stain.

Then I applied Minwax, dark walnut (which I had in the garage) with a brush, and wiped it with a rag until I had a nice, warm, more rawhidey looking color (with no sign of pink).

With a black permanent marker I drew in bears (of course), and some landscaping.

 

And then, because it was still looking kind of bare, I added a few pine trees.

The final look was worthy of any cabin, and when it was placed on a tall brass floor lamp, it was just perfect.

Cost: $0

Time: About an hour

You could do it with any old lampshade...

5 Things I Really Want

I'm starting over, and trying to get a new business off the ground. Finally I'm putting all the ideas I have always had (you know, those "I could make that" ideas) into production, and trying to market them. Today is the day where I am trying to focus on one thing at a time, and add to my market by blogging.

1. A free and well stocked source for used pallets (I have so many projects in mind!)
2. A new work table, preferably like this one from Resto.
3. An old laser printer to use for image transfers.
4. Some way to buy a DTF printer
5. A higher comfort level with putting myself and my thoughts out there for the world to see...

My project for today is finishing up a couple of small duvet covers for a custom order, and I thought I'd share some of the details- how to print on fabric using freezer paper for a stencil. First, I printed out the text that I wanted to use, and then traced it onto the papery side of the freezer paper.

I taped the freeze paper down to a board, and cut out the letters with a sharp exacto knife. Then I taped the completed stencil down to my fabric to keep it straight (shiney side down), and ironed it onto the fabric using a dry iron at the highest temp (linen), paying special attention to the edges of the cutouts to make sure they are sealed to the fabric. 

                           

I mixed my paint color with regular acrylic paint (I know it is permanent on fabric because I've gotten it on my clothes many times, and it NEVER comes out!). Regular acrylic paint does leave a rough sort of surface which you could avoid by using fabric paint, but for this project it doesn't really matter. My chosen color is olive green, which I get by mixing a hunter green with yellow and hot pink-it works perfectly! Next, paint over the stencil.

When the paint is completely dry (about 15 minutes in this case), just lift the edge of the stencil and peel it off. In this case I did it very carefully so that I could use it again, because I am making two for this project.  Notes: for letters with centers like A or O, I place the centers and ironed them on in place separately.

I'm saving the letters and numbers for a while-
I might figure out something else to use them for-you never know!